


Unmaking

by Wolf_of_Lilacs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Gen, Harry is dead (or is he?), M/M, Tragedy, Voldemort's world is terrible for everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 12:33:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19426069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/Wolf_of_Lilacs
Summary: Voldemort wins. It is as it should be, until the boy.





	Unmaking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sujing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sujing/gifts).
  * Inspired by [opened heart, secrets spilled](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18416036) by [sujing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sujing/pseuds/sujing). 



> Luva, I hope you like this. Your poem was so wonderful, and I was haunted by it. This doesn't really do it justice.

Voldemort glimpses him first in a mirror. It's how these things go.

He blinks once, and the boy is gone. He thinks nothing of it, continues as he has for years now.

It's his world. He has nothing to fear. He has conquered death and all his foes. He is Lord Voldemort.

He dreams of him once: a boy that isn't quite a boy, really, for he seems far older. He is dark-haired and his eyes are too vivid for those of any ghost. Voldemort feels the strange coolness of his fingers upon his brow, almost a curious touch, as if he is some new arrival in a statuary garden.

"Who are you?" Voldemort whispers, lips barely able to move for the cold of the touch, seeping from the boy-not-boy's fingers, deep into his bones.

"You know me," the boy replies.

When he wakes, Voldemort isn’t so sure that he does.

*

The new school year is beginning. It's 1991. When he goes through the roster of new students—the Purebloods listed first, the Half-Bloods and Mudbloods lumped together at the bottom, with less equipment and different classes—he doesn't think of the absence of Harry Potter's name.

It's not important.

Britain is isolated, blockaded. The Magical United States and the rest of Europe throw sanctions on them, for the breach of the Statute, for the oppression and murder and detaining of Muggles and Squibs. It's no matter. Voldemort is proud of the nation he has built.

*

"What would you have been?" The boy in the mirror again, older now in aspect; his age is hard to tell, for he is pale in daylight, face devoid of all color. Voldemort turns away.

"It isn't about what I would have been. I am not. They know nothing of what I was." Tom Riddle was dead; he'd scrubbed all evidence of him from Hogwarts records, Obliviated where he had to, killed Albus Dumbledore.

"Denying the past doesn't change it, you know." There is something like pity in the boy's expression, and Voldemort shies away from it.

"What do you want from me? How do I get you to leave me alone?"

The boy smiles, hand outstretched, but still in the mirror.

"How dare you presume!" And with a sweep of his hand, Voldemort, naturally, breaks the mirror.

"That won't work," he hears. "I'll find you in dreams, in other mirrors."

"I'll break them all and never sleep again," Voldemort replies, petulant, the magic from his rage sparking painfully in his fingers. He sweeps his hand out again, the power causing a window to shatter.

"I suppose it won't fuck you up any more than you already are."

"What do you want from me?" Voldemort repeats, hissing. He turns his head every which way, but can see nothing of the boy.

There is no reply.

The boy doesn't make good on his promise. Mirrors remain empty, and Voldemort sleeps as fitfully as he always has. For a time, the boy does not come to him. Perhaps his show of power scared him away; such things often have in the past, for all his foes know their place. He is Lord Voldemort. His power is unparalleled.

*

He watches his subjects from afar, watches how they all lean close together, have someone to confide in. He turns his lip at it; humans are weak. He needs only himself. Bellatrix watches him still, even after years of rebuffs (she tried to slip him a love potion once. He took her right hand). They all bunch together when he enters, even though they do their best to appear unaffected. It's rather irksome, but again, they are human, and they are weak.

*

"You don't have to lie to me," the boy says. It isn't a dream this time, and there are no mirrors. He hovers beside Voldemort's reading chair, cradling something in his hand. Voldemort leans forward despite himself to get a better look.

It's a bunch of lilies. He stiffens. "Why do you have those? What is the meaning of this?"

"You killed my mother. And here I am."

"I've killed many people's mothers. And fathers. Everyone must die except for me. What does it matter how, or when?"

The boy sets the lilies in Voldemort's lap, and when he tries to brush them away, they become heavy and he can do nothing. Their sweet scent suffuses the room, and he cannot breathe...

"You threw her aside to kill me, then killed her anyway despite the promise you made. There was no reason for you to do that."

"There was." Voldemort leans as far from the lilies as he can get, but it isn't terribly far. "I promised her survival to a traitor. I dealt with him directly. All was as it should be."

The ghost touches him again, and it's been years since that first time. He's almost colder now. Voldemort shivers. "And why did you kill me?" The question is a breath, close to his ear.

"I don't know you," Voldemort maintains, teeth chattering.

And then there is color to the ghost, like nothing he has ever seen, and it is as though he lives.

"Why did you kill me?"

He does know him. He looks just like his father. "I had to. You were a threat. You could have been—"

"I was a baby, as you once were."

Voldemort almost smiles. "Exactly. Babies grow up into wizards and worse. Now, please take these away."

"Fine." The lilies disappear, as does the ghost. The cold and the scent linger. Voldemort attempts every spell he knows to Banish them, but nothing seems to work. Sighing, he goes to bed. Blessedly, he does not dream.

But he does, on a whim, go to the Potters' grave the next afternoon. It had been a small thing to allow their surviving friends. What was a grave but a monument to a wasted life—wasted because it ended. It was no symbol of hope. It could not harm him. And yet—

There the lilies are, as fresh as they had been the night before. He bends to examine them, casts Revealing spells. But they are only lilies.

And as he looks, he catches sight of the epitaph: _The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death._

How rich, he thinks, to place that on a gravestone. It is no use to the dead.

"You haven't conquered death, you know, only life."

"You know far more than a mere child should." Voldemort doesn't look up.

"In death we are made new," he says. "It is its own adventure."

"And yet you are still dead," Voldemort retorts. "There is nothing—"

"But do you live?" The boy talks over him. He's close against his back, and Voldemort cannot move away.

"I had no choice but to kill you, and them! Do you understand me? It was prudent, as I have always tried to be."

"I know." He moves in front of him, his face as lifelike as Voldemort has ever seen it. Voldemort's hands shake, his knees are weak, and he wants to rest for a moment. (Something is wrong.)

"You are lovely," he says blankly, realizing it with an odd pang, his mouth forming the words laboriously; they are stuck in his throat, his jaw is tired, his tongue won't move quite as it ought.

The boy-not-boy takes his hand. It isn't so cold, now. "I forgive you for what you've done to me."

Weak, even in death, then. "Why? That's ridiculous—"

His finger is at his lips, his green eyes boring deep into Voldemort's own.

Something is very, very wrong. "What are you?" Voldemort chokes. "You are no ghost."

"No, not quite. My mother was willing to die for me, and there's power even in that."

_The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death._

"What is happening? I thought you forgave me—"

"I have." The pity again, hands cupping his face, lips against his in something not quite a kiss. “You gave me your heart."

"I didn't intend to—" But he's not sure if he's spoken this, or just thought it. Either way, the boy answers.

"I'm sorry it's gone this way, for you. But there wasn't another way."

He's dying, he realizes. Dying, or close enough. _Horcruxes_ , he thinks. _I have Horcruxes. I can't die._

The boy is more solid, he realizes. Not so cold, heavier where he lies atop him (when did he fall back?), his breath warm against Voldemort's cheek.

It's almost comfortable.

_There wasn't another way._

Voldemort wants to protest, to writhe against this impossible weight of (fate, death, doom) mortality, but he can do nothing.

He is unmade in a moment, taken apart, returned to the earth. He is not above it. But Harry Potter's forgiveness is warmth as he fades.


End file.
